on a growing Mars population and failed utopias

Are we allowed to smoke here? — Do they have a toi­let here somewhere?

We were on the way back to Mars (I wrote this first bit in the car while a big red moon loomed in the dis­tant over the dark lands) and that inbe­tween moment was very good for look­ing either way to take stock of things past and things to come. As I said to a friend, I feel a bit torn about the project, like I always do when in the mid­dle of things. For one thing, I am over­whelmed by the pos­i­tive and warm responses we’ve been get­ting from the pub­lic. (Imag­ine, a guy made a spon­ta­neous dona­tion of 10 euros because he liked it so much, that’s just unbe­liev­able! ) But suc­cess, even on a mod­er­ate scale, always makes me slightly sus­pi­cious, like a sol­dier on patrol who meets with no resis­tance where he expected to find at least some­thing and whose fear increases with every next step he takes. The silence becomes almost unbear­able. The artist as a front line sol­dier advanc­ing on enemy lines — I know it’s a ter­ri­ble metaphor, yet that’s what it often feel likes in a coun­try in which express­ing dis­like of arts and dis­ap­proval of artists in every man­ner con­ceiv­able is almost as pop­u­lar as soc­cer. Sad, really.

peace on Mars!

Peace on Mars is what Kim Stan­ley Robinson’s found­ing fathers wanted. His descrip­tion of their failed utopia extends not only to sci­en­tists and what he called prim­i­tives. For is it not true that a lot of artists yearn to “con­cen­trate their atten­tion on the real work, which means every­thing that is done to stay alive, or make things, or satisy one’s curios­ity, or play?” Many an artist prac­tice, espe­cially in coun­tries like Hol­land where art is for a sub­stan­tial part sub­si­dized, resem­bles what Robin­son calls “a lit­tle model of pre­his­toric utopia, carved out of transna­tional money by clever pri­mates who want to live well” — you’d only have to sub­sti­tute transna­tional money with national money. ”Liv­ing well” in this case refers back to the utopian life, and not the life of the con­sumer in a cap­i­tal­ist society.

“we are greatly indebted to our bio-engineers for mak­ing life on Mars possible“

“You’d think every­one would join, John said.” Robin­son has Arkady reply: “Yes, and they might, but it isn’t being offered to them. And that means it wasn’t a true utopia. We clever pri­mate sci­en­tists [artists] were will­ing to carve out islands for our­selves, rather than work to cre­ate such con­di­tions for every­one. And so in real­ity, the islands are part of the [trans]national order. They are paid for, they are never truly free, there is never a case of truly pure research [art]. Because the peo­ple who pay for the sci­en­tist [artist] islands will even­tu­ally want a return on their invest­ment. And now we are enter­ing that time. A return is being demanded for our island. And so it all comes back, and we have a return of own­er­ship, and prices, and wages. The whole profit system.”

“it all looks a bit sad here“

I wouldn’t say I’d totally agree with Robin­son here, but he sure seems to voice sen­ti­ments which are ram­pant about sub­si­dized arts and artists — and there­fore it is worth tak­ing a look at his words. Of course the pro­fes­sion of the artist is open to any­one, so any­body who would want to join, would be wel­come and try his or her hand at liv­ing the utopia. It’s not so much that it isn’t offered to them. Not every­body has the same yearn­ing for this prim­i­tive kind of utopia for one thing, but a lot of peo­ple seem to resent artists [sci­en­tists] who do want to live this way and would love to see the oppor­tu­nity taken away. If we can’t have our kind of utopia, than no one else can have theirs either, seems to be the credo. Some­how, the sen­ti­ments seem anti-utopian.

“tastes like LSD, want to try some?“

What does find an echo, in both the pub­lic and increas­ingly in pol­i­tics as well, is the feel­ing that the sub­si­dized arts are like islands that are part of the national order, and that it is about time a return on the ‘invest­ment’ is har­vested. Hence the empha­sis on com­mu­nity arts as a way for artists to con­tribute to the improve­ment of the life of ‘every­one else’ — as one kind of return on the invest­ment made by the state with the tax­pay­ers money. This devel­op­ment goes hand in hand with an increas­ing pres­sure on the arts to return to a profit sys­tem, to become more busi­nesslike (it’s not sur­pris­ing art admin­is­tra­tor are so in love with Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Cre­ative Class) Ide­ally, in this view, the arts would be left to ‘the mar­ket’ and the eter­nal pow­ers of demand and sup­ply will reg­u­late every­thing. Need­less to say, this is all rather naive in terms of eco­nomic thought and the only thing it accom­plish is to find other peo­ple who pay for the islands of the arists, so per­haps we should sup­pose other forces are at work behind the eco­nomic argu­ments. The essen­tial ques­tion is of course: what are these other forces? Is it an anti-utopian resent­ment? Or is it just a case of the major­ity pound­ing on an easy vic­tim, the depen­dent artists? Or is it some­thing else altogether?

should I stay or should I go?

This after­noon saw the offi­cial open­ing of the project spaces at the Noorder­sta­tion plus the pre­sen­ta­tion of our results till so far (more than 120 por­traits!). On occa­sions like this lots of offi­cial dig­ni­taries tend to turn up and cel­e­brate what they see as their achieve­ments, despite the fact that this is the first time we set eyes on them. What is often a lit­tle irk­some to us as artists is to see how this exec­u­tive class is aglow with hap­pi­ness with the extent of the par­tic­i­pa­tion achieved with the project. It’s never stated explic­itly, but their com­ments betray how they think about the peo­ple we worked with — and that has lit­tle to do with being on equal foot­ing or sim­ple human con­tact. It’s so much of the old ‘us’ and ‘them’ and so lit­tle about about ‘me and you together’. Instead of bridg­ing any gaps that might exist, the gap is care­fully rein­serted. You sense how art — and with it you as the artist — is con­sid­ered as a means towards an end, and you are reminded of how art is ‘never truly free’. Gladly enough, these open­ings never last very long and, for us, do not con­sti­tute the most impor­tant moment in the process. Tomor­row we will return to the nor­mal order of things and con­tinue with offer­ing a — yes, sub­si­dized — moment of dis­in­ter­ested, utopian play to passers-by. Robinson’s utopian prob­lems remain to be addressed at a later point. In his Red Mars it is solved with rev­o­lu­tion­ary upris­ing and a repres­sive war — I don’t think Dutch artists are such great rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies these days, so I don’t think we should expect a war any­time soon, even though that doesn’t make me sleep any better.

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It sounds a bit dry per­haps, but I guess that’s because this pro­gram wants to appeal to the aca­d­e­m­i­cally inclined among the cura­tors? In any case, it’s an afford­able oppor­tu­nity for young cura­tors with over three years of work­ing expe­ri­ence. Dead­line com­ing up March 20th!

“Fol­low­ing ICI’s Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Addis Ababa with the Zoma Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (ZCAC) in 2014, and in Johan­nes­burg with The Bag Fac­tory Artists’ Stu­dios in 2013, ICI con­tin­ues its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing cura­to­r­ial train­ing in Africa, and to devel­op­ing regional net­works, with the Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Mar­rakech. The pro­gram will focus on the cul­tural land­scape of West Africa and the Maghreb while also explor­ing the role of cura­tors work­ing for both local and inter­na­tional audi­ences. The sem­i­nars of this pro­gram will be con­ducted mostly in Eng­lish, but also in Ara­bic and French. Trans­la­tion will be avail­able when nec­es­sary, but work­ing pro­fi­ciency in Eng­lish is essen­tial and famil­iar­ity with more than one lan­guage is rec­om­mended. “

George Arbid, King­dom of Bahrain National Par­tic­i­pa­tion, Bien­nale di Venezia 2014Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms.Architecture from the Arab World 1914–2014 Bahrain Min­istry of Cul­ture, Bahrain; Arab Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture, Beirut

Ste­fano Graziani pointed me to a Call for Cap­tions by the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture (CCA), an inter­est­ing premise also with a view on the cur­rent debates sur­rounded the lat­est WPP awards:

“We’re inter­ested in how cap­tions influ­ence the way we read pho­tographs. Cap­tions can cloud and clar­ify. They can attack an image or stand apart, appar­ently neu­tral and trans­par­ent. They might seem tran­quil, but can be fraught. They are def­i­nitely rela­tional things. They involve an inter­ac­tion, and we think the best way to con­tinue to think about cap­tions is to invite you to join a con­ver­sa­tion with us.“

Mon­treal weather reports tell me it’s cold out­side… but you can stay warm at the open­ing of the Art Souter­rain fes­ti­val tonight, where Stead Bureau cos­mo­naut Mari Bas­ta­shevski takes you on a tour through the very spe­cial realm of state sur­veil­lance in inter­net hyper­space. And to cel­e­brate this happy occa­sion, let’s remem­ber the cheer­ful lyrics of the Red Dwarf theme song!

I’ll pack my bags and head into hyper­spaceWhere I’ll suc­ceed at time-warp speedSpend my days in ultra­vi­o­let raysFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun.

We’ll lock on course straight through the uni­verseYou and me and the galaxyReach the stage where hyper-drive’s engagedFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun,Fun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun. … See MoreSee Less